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The United States in a Fortress North America/Luft '46 Scenario
Topic Started: Jun 12 2015, 07:46 AM (323 Views)
Delta Force

I've made two threads on Alternate History about the United States Army Air Force and United States Navy in a Fortress North America/Luft '46 Scenario. I was wondering kind of input you might have about the discussion thus far, how you would go about it, etc.
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Simon Darkshade
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Nefarious Swashbuckler
Setting aside the difficulties of getting the Nazis to perform at the required level, then it is a straightforward situation of the USN capturing the Azores, Canaries and Iceland and then the USAF conducting strategic bombing operations over Europe with B-29s and B-36s.

Capturing North Africa for bases in the Nile Delta, Libya et al would not be beyond the means of a combined operation coming along a southern vector. Once the US can get Germany into a battle of aerial attrition, it will always win. It is quicker and more direct to do this via the British Isles, but they are a difficult proposition to invade.
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Basil Fawlty
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Post Tenebras Lux
I'm of the opinion the atom bomb will get the Germans every time.
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Simon Darkshade
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Nefarious Swashbuckler
That goes without saying. Once production levels reach 10/month, then the requisite arsenal for the elimination of German warmaking potential is in hand.
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Delta Force

To make things more interesting, let's assume there isn't a nuclear option.
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Simon Darkshade
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Nefarious Swashbuckler
That doesn't make things interesting, just selectively unrealistic. If we jump through copious hoops to allow the survival of Nazi Germany past 1946, the defeat of the Soviet Union and the defeat/neutralization of the British Empire, we are already in tenuous enough territory.

We cross from alternate history to sandbox engagements of military forces, something that can be found in the exceptionally well researched and nicely written Anglo-American Nazi War, which for all its good qualities falls down in the central issue of fighting World War 2 with the weapons designed to fight an atomic World War 3, as well as playing hard and fast with the important supporting details. It almost reaches the point of another WW3 scenario which has a thumb firmly on the scales.

The atomic bomb was inevitable, extremely affordable and allowed the reality of strategic bombing to reflect its doctrine. Once it is made, it will be used to save blood and treasure.
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Delta Force

I mean more in terms of the nuclear option being delayed. There are quite a few ways in which this might have occurred. Otherwise, it would indeed be simply resolved through a few atomic attacks.
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Simon Darkshade
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Nefarious Swashbuckler
Delaying the whole progress of the infrastructure of the atomic bomb would take a lot extremely unlikely events being followed by extremely irrational decisions. You might be able to delay the first bomb until 1946, but the USA had the wealth and resources to overcome the obstacles that could have held up a purely British bomb until 1947.

In that case, conventional heavy bombing from North Africa would hold the line until half a dozen buckets of sunshine are ready.
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Delta Force

Didn't the British loan one of their top explosives experts to the Manhattan Project to solve the implosion design problem? Without that, it would slow atomic bomb production to a trickle, as the uranium enrichment processes being used at the time were very inefficient compared to reprocessing spent pile fuel to recover plutonium.
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Simon Darkshade
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Nefarious Swashbuckler
HEU production was inefficient, but the Little Boy would do the job; any delay in building up an arsenal of them would be more a matter of months than years.
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Delta Force

The Firebombing of Tokyo (the deadliest air attack in history) used 1,665 tons (3,330,000 pounds) of munitions dropped by 279 B-29 bombers. A B-36 could carry 72,000 pounds of munitions, so a raid of around 46 of them could have achieved the same result. Each bomber could also carry 27,900 gallons (167,400 pounds/83.7 tons) of aviation fuel, for a total of 1,283,400 gallons (7,700,400 pounds/3850.2 tons).

Coincidentally, that's the size of a Strategic Air Command heavy bombardment wing, which had 45 aircraft. SAC had several of those heavy bomber wings too. How would the logistics have worked out with several wings of aircraft carrying out a raid on the scale of Tokyo every few days, perhaps even sooner?
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Simon Darkshade
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Nefarious Swashbuckler
I don't think they would be carrying anywhere near 72,000lb on long range missions, especially trans-Atlantic ones. Around 36,000-40,000 would be closer to the mark. Even then, if they were just 500lb bombs, there wouldn't be the same impact.

German cities also didn't burn as readily as the Japanese ones. Based on the RAF experience, you'd want a spread of 4000lb or 8000lb cookies to blast down city blocks, incendiaries to start fires and penetrating bombs with time delay fuses to hamper recovery efforts. This would be further improved by adding in deep penetrating bombs (not necessarily Tallboys, but something similar) to wreck havoc on the utilities networks.

This would test the hypothesis that five raids like Hamburg would have knocked Germany out of the war. I tend to think it would take a fair bit more.
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Delta Force

Aerial refueling was developed by the 1940s, so it's possible that later models of the B-36 would feature refueling equipment to help increase range and/or payload. Perhaps a variant of the C-99 could be used as the refueling aircraft itself as the KC-99.

As for large blockbuster/bunker busting bombs, the B-36 was specifically redesigned during its development to enable carriage of two T-12 Cloudmaker bombs, the largest aerial bombs ever designed. According to this book, the best B-36B unit achieved bombing accuracy of 441 feet (135 meter) at 25,000 feet under visual conditions, and 1,053 feet (320 meters) under radar guidance.
Edited by Delta Force, Jun 30 2015, 08:09 PM.
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Simon Darkshade
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Nefarious Swashbuckler
Those bombs aren't going to be around in this scenario.

Refuelling is not going to dramatically raise a trans Atlantic payload, just extend range.
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Delta Force

I can't find information on the earlier variants, but I managed to find some for the B-36J. It was a reduced weight variant with a landing gear modification for a higher MTOW, and even it wouldn't have been capable of taking off with a full ordnance and fuel load. That would seem to imply that a B-36 could bring more payload to a longer range if it took off with a full ordnance load and then refueled.
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Simon Darkshade
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Nefarious Swashbuckler
Refueling would help in the overall mission profile, but for a real city-busting effort, you'd want North African bases. As said previously, a mix of 2000lb deep penetrators, 4000lb cookies, incendiaries and 12000lb earthquake bombs could do a heck of a lot of damage to a German city if applied in the right conditions.
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Basil Fawlty
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Post Tenebras Lux
If five Hamburg-like raids would have knocked Germany out of the war, why did they not conduct five raids?
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Simon Darkshade
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Nefarious Swashbuckler
They did. Just not all within a few days.

Hamburg was a combination of weather, city conditions, the use of Window, concentration of bombing over several days and cooperation between the USAAF and RAF.
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